9/18/99 -- 5:56 PM

Millions still must boil water, live without power and telephones

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TRENTON, N.J. (AP) - Millions of New Jersey residents had to boil water or live without telephones or power Saturday while emergency crews worked to repair the effects of flooding at a water treatment plant, a major telephone switching station and several electrical substations.

Several telecommunication companies that share a switching center in Roselle Park worked all day drying out equipment inundated by the flooding caused by Hurricane Floyd.

However, they were not yet able to restore Bell Atlantic telephone service to more than 1 million customers in New Jersey, or AT&T wireless service to parts of the New York City metropolitan area.

Some 35,000 Bell Atlantic customers in Bergen County had not heard a dial tone at all since a backup generator at the center failed Friday.

In addition, about 1 million Bell Atlantic long distance customers in 23 Bergen and Passaic County towns had trouble making out-of-town calls. They had only about a 1-in-10 chance of completing a long-distance call, said Eric Rabe, vice president of media relations for Bell Atlantic.

``We brought power back to the local switch sometime after midnight but because the cables are soaking wet we can't use them until they're dried out,'' said Rabe.

AT&T Wireless houses power supply equipment at the same center. It reported dead spots in parts of New Jersey as well as New York's northern suburbs and borough of Brooklyn, and Litchfield County, Conn.

``We're in a full-court press right now to get service restored as soon as possible,'' AT&T Wireless spokesman Dave Johnson said.

There was no water service for tens of thousands of customers of Elizabethtown Water Co., said Henry Patterson, a company spokesman.

``At this point, there is nothing much we can do,'' said Patterson. He strongly urged customers to stop all nonessential use and ``leave the mains open for safety purposes only.''

Flooding had overwhelmed the company's Bridgewater plant. It was relying on another water treatment plant but was having a hard time meeting demand, Chapman said.

About 88,000 homes and business remained without electric service.

==================================== End

Ray

-- Ray (ray@totacc.com), September 18, 1999

Answers

sure hope we have a mild=winter.BUT i think it will be wierd.er uh, i wonder if we ,re missing the message' from=HEAVEN?

-- a dry run? (dogs@zianet.com), September 18, 1999.

Wow, a backup generator failed? They aren't supposed to do that! Also, wondering how some are boiling water unless they have gas stoves..... hmmmmm.... wonder if the mechanisms which use electricity to deliver the gas will continue for long..... 3 days.... yeah.

-- Kristi (securxsys@cs.com), September 18, 1999.

I'm in a burb of Philadelphia, I just got my power restored 2 hours ago, I lost it Thursday afternoon around 4. I got lucky, only 2 inches of water in my basement after the pumps stopped running when power went out. By then floyd was moving out and rain was abating.

Several communities got badly flooded and one very close to me got evacuated. Flood water were up to 4 feet to living room walls.

"Of the 12 deaths in the Philadelphia region attributed to Floyd, six occurred in Montgomery County, said County Coroner Halbert E. Fillinger Jr."

http://www.phillynews.com/inquirer/99/Sep/18/front_page/WET18.htm

That's my county, but I'm in one of the lucky towns.

It's said to be the worse weather related disaster in 41 years in our region, the last was Hurricane Agnes. I'm not used to hurricanes or weather disasters, I'm glad in a way that our TV was out. I spent 2 days in quiet and peace by oil lamps, coleman lanterns and stoves, and going to bed earlier, oblivious to the devastation around me. Made my husband appreciate my Y2K preps, and now he's definitely buying a generator. I just learned from the morning papers that at one point they were thinking of evacuating us, they were worried our water reservoir's spillway would give and flood my area. It held but barely. No TV is bliss. I just missed my hair dryer.

-- Chris (#$%^&@pond.com), September 18, 1999.

Only 2 days without computer and I forget how to HTML...

-- Chris (#$%^&@pond.com), September 18, 1999.

Chris, I wonder how many people weathered the storm fairly well thanks to stashing Y2K supplies? In some cases it wouldn't have done much good because houses were flooded to the rooftops, sometimes beyond--I should say ARE still flooded. Glad you made it through all right. Terrific that your worst problem was lack of a hair dryer! Love it!

-- Old Git (anon@spamproblems.com), September 18, 1999.

You hit the nail on the head! the phrase "backup generator failed". Does that remind you of the situation at EVERY US nuclear power plant? Even they admit that they have only 85% reliability to start and run online to give the life-saving power needed to both cool the nuclear core, the spent fuel rods pool, AND re-boot power to the control systems internally. Wonder how it is that even the DGI's would consider it very worrisome if ALL companies were, on average, able to be only 85% compliant/remediated/tested by dec. 31/99, yet they seem to have no problem with this figure that is all that stands between restoration and nuclear meltdown?! I guess they think there will be ABSOLUTELY no external power plant failures to require this scenario?

-- profit_of_doom (doom@helltopay.com), September 18, 1999.

Gee profit_of, Is the Y2K rollover going to bring a hurricane with it? Are 2 digit years going to flood houses? Will the lines be too wet to use because of some "embedded chip"?

Tell me, are there looters and welfare people rioting in the streets because of these current problems?

Fed up with stupidity.

-- Cherri (sams@brigadoon.com), September 18, 1999.

I sure agree with your last sentence, Cherri; only, don't waste your money tryin' to stash up on any more of it, 'cause there's NEVER GONNA BE ANY SHORTAGE. . .

BTW, why are ya' wastin' yer time posting to this particular forum (you know what the gig here is) if what all the folks out in cyberspace who actually believe in the need for preparation(s) and the underlying reasons for the need to prepare (you know who you are) are all shades of wrong or over-reactive, or just full of what yer fed up with??????

-- Dewer Dye (qwerty@!!!!.net), September 18, 1999.

Yup, my office manager distributed the fax from the Township of South Brunswick, NJ. The only problem - it was about 1/2 hour after I had a nice, big, cold drink from the local water supplied water cooler. Hey, it's almost Sunday, and I feel fine. <:)=

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), September 18, 1999.

Cherri, you said: " Tell me, are there looters and welfare people rioting in the streets because of these current problems?"

Sorry for laughing; I was picturing rioting and looting in flood waters with impediments like submerged cars, dead animals, raw sewage and so on. In any case, as far as I know, the communities affected are all small towns, hamlets and oceanfront areas, not huge megalopolis-type urban centers.

You miss the point of all these Floydisms, Cherri. The point is that one needs to be as prepared as possible because it's not, and never has been for many of us, just Y2K. We've all learned a lot from Floyd about when or if to evacuate and what type of emergency response can be expected in the event of ANY disaster or disruption.

-- Old Git (anon@spamproblems.com), September 18, 1999.

Ya shoulda seen the mayhem at the supermarket. ATMs were down, credit cards didn't work and checks couldn't be verified. If you didn't have CASH you were SOL. All the water was gone (I don't need it because I have a very deep well), all the bread was gone, as was most of the fruit and milk. Every other person at the register was having trouble because they apparently didn't notice (or thought it didn't apply to them) the cash-only signs at the entrance.

My family got through just fine. Deep-cycle batteries kept the sump-pump, well, etc. running and, of course, I had cash at the store. The only damage was in my home office. The carpeting got soaked very badly. I've pulled over 15 gallons out of it and it *still* squishes whenever I take a step. Other than that, my Y2K preps helped make what could have been a very bad situation just mildly annoying...

-TECH32-

-- TECH32 (TECH32@NOMAIL.COM), September 18, 1999.

Another (relatively) unsolicited testimonial to Y2K supplies! Let's have more. . .

-- Old Git (anon@spamproblems.com), September 18, 1999.

Cherri,

Tell me, are there looters and welfare people rioting in the streets because of these current problems?

Actually, there *were* reports of burglars/looters taking advantage of the situation. They were looting evacuated homes as well as breaking into inhabited ones because they knew all the police were tied up elsewhere. The Bergen County Police chief said this on TV. I heard him say this myself. So there!

-TECH32-

-- TECH32 (TECH32@NOMAIL.COM), September 18, 1999.

"Chris, I wonder how many people weathered the storm fairly well thanks to stashing Y2K supplies?"

Old Git, I got a pleasant surprise from what I thought was my "Y2K oblivious" neighbors; 2 of them had generators making a racket noise that spoiled my otherwise bliss if I opened the windows. They weren't right next door to me so the noise was bareable outside still. Like distant and constant lawn-mowing.

Got me pondering about wether I really want a generator or not. Those things ARE noisy. I read about them here being noisy, but it's not until I actually heard them that I realized just how. Still, I decided that the noise is worth my hair dryer, if it's less than a 6-7. Passed that, I won't care about my hair ;-) Oh, and a hot shower. Heating up a pot of water to wash at the sink is functional, but gawwwwd is a hot shower soothing!

And I also found out how really deep down nice and helpful my neighbors are. I'm in a neighborhood of "professionals", nobody socializes much. But the past two days I got to know some of them more than I have in the past 12 years I've been here. One neighbor was going around and offering to pump out basements with a portable generator pump he leased. Another one asked us if we wanted ice, he was going out to buy it in bulk. I sent my son to help an ederly neighbor who was trying to chop-up a huge tree branche off his lawn. Everyone was out yesterday, cleaning up their yards and chatting. Made me feel good, this neighborhood will be Y2K-OK afterall.

Cherri, I don't wish for you to lose electricity for even 2 days. You'd get so crabby that you'd probably beat on everyone around you. Sheesh.

-- Chris (#$%^&@pond.com), September 18, 1999.

See also...

NC disaster taught me 1st hand how vunerable we are

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id= 001Qiy

Red Cross had resources for only one shelter in Rocky Mount, NC; volunteers set up another

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id= 001QXr

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), September 18, 1999.

Tell me, are there looters and welfare people rioting in the streets because of these current problems?

Fed up with stupidity.

-- Cherri (sams@brigadoon.com), September 18, 1999.

Yep, Cherri - there is.

Karen in NC

-- karen (karen@karen.karen), September 18, 1999.

Fed up with stupidity.

-- Cherri (sams@brigadoon.com), September 18, 1999.

I hate to flame you with this but January first is the dead of winter and natural disasters occur at that time of the year also. It might not make a differance if an Arctic front comes through or an icestorm but it will multiply the problems exponentially if Nature shows up angry during the winter.

If shit happens with Y2K problems and a Natural disaster and the areas affected don't have there shit together folks are going to die quickly. In Montreal they were lucky it wasn't any colder. If you think I am jumping on the bandwagon here about disasters, I think not because of living in the Canadian arctic and knowing how to live in those conditions. Folks have NO IDEA how to survive in that type of enviorment, if the same thing happened.

Nature doesn't play favourites. If the utilities aren't prepared to exist in any condition (and they are obviously not) then your kind of "stupidity" will result in deaths.

By the way if the entity with the wet wires wasn't prepared with a suitable contingency plan in case of a flood then they didn't have there shit together. I would think this is what profit was talking about. Almost is never a comfortable option during the middle of winter.

-- Brian (imager@home.com), September 19, 1999.

Chris, I moved here from the BuxMont area. (Maybe we were neighbors!) Talked to my mom on the phone and she said it was pretty bad, good thing that her son has been reminding her constantly to be ready for Y2K.

-- Uncle Deedah (unkeed@yahoo.com), September 19, 1999.

Unc, read the Philly.news.com link I gave above, really is the worst disaster that has happened in the area in quiet some time. Your mom isn't exgagerating. Glad to hear she is ok too. I knew you were from the area from the "about you" threads. I'm in the Brynmawr/Ardmore area.

-- Chris (#$%^&@pond.com), September 19, 1999.

The stupidity I was referring to was the association with the floods and Y2K.

"backup generator failed". Does that remind you of the situation at EVERY US nuclear power plant?

And on to the warning of nuclear meltdowns. The fact that the backup generator did not work because it had gotten wet and assuming that will be the case during the rollover with any power plant that should loose power is just plain stupid. Exagerating beyound the bounds of possibility does nothing to help convince people they should be prepared for any possible emergency. The fact that people were prepared because they are worried about Y2K is a very good thing, and should help those who were convince others that even though they do not believe they will need to "prepare" for Y2K, they need to "prepare" for any number of other possible emergencies.

-- Cherri (sams@briugadoon.com), September 19, 1999.